Different methods with varying degrees of success have been introduced in the past for determination of soil carbonates, with none of them being universally accepted as the superior one. Efforts to introduce new and better methods are being continued. In this study, a new conductometric method for determination of soil carbonates was developed then compared with the two well known methods, i.e. acid neutralization and pressure calcimeter, for evaluation. For this purpose, 48 soil samples of wide differences in texture, %OM, CEC, gypsum content, EC, pH and carbonate content were selected from among many soil samples collected from different parts of Iran. Due to higher accuracy, the pressure calcimeter method was used as the reference method. It was indicated that the new method was highly correlated with the other two methods, but it was better correlated with the reference method as compared with the acid neutralization method. In addition, the mean and relative deviations of the new method from the reference method were lower than those for the case of acid neutralization method, indicating comparatively lower error or higher accuracy for the new method. The ease and speed of measurement for the new method was almost the same as – if not better than – the other two methods, with the new method being safer.
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